Mysore/Mysuru: Mysore Open Forum has organised a talk on ‘AI and the Future of Humanity: Power, Pitfalls and Prudence’ by Dr. Shalini R. Urs, Founder, MYRA School of Business, Executive Director Emerita and Professor, International School of Information Management, University of Mysore (UoM), at 10.30 am on July 8 at Kalpa Kshetra Auditorium, #581/1, Vijayanagar 4th Stage, 1st Phase, Mysuru. The talk is open to all. [Mob: 94498-19536]

Dr. Shalini Urs began her career by joining UoM as a Library and Information Science lecturer in 1976. She was instrumental in setting up the International School of Information Management in UoM in 2005 with funding from the Ford Foundation.

She was a Fulbright Scholar and a Visiting Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, USA, during 2000 – 2001; an adjunct faculty at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIITB) during 2005-2007; and a Visiting Professor at the Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute, Bengaluru, during 1998 and 1999.

Dr. Urs has won many awards including Adobe-NDLTD – Leadership Award in 2004 and Emerald Research Fund Award 2007-08. She was awarded Mortenson Distinguished Lecturer 2010 by the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA. She was conferred with the Women Leadership Award by Dewang Mehta Business School in 2014 and the Education Evangelist Award of India by Skill Tree Foundation in 2015 for her outstanding contribution to higher education.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been garnering attention for a couple of years. AI’s immense potential and transformative power are absolute. AI will advance at a frenetic rate, accelerating its deployment and transforming domains — from agriculture to healthcare to warfare, in an unprecedented manner.

Application of AI is categorised into the following areas: AI in Healthcare, AI in Education, AI in the Financial Services Industry: AI in Media and e-Commerce, AI in Robotics and AI in agriculture. While self-driving cars and robots in surgery have caught the public’s attention, many applications have seeped into our lives knowingly and unknowingly.

Most experts are optimistic that, like the threat of a “Nuclear Holocaust” during the cold war era, we will also be able to manage the existential crisis posed by AI.